The Day CYPRES Saved My Life… with Fleur Jones

I have been skydiving since 2007. I have a full-time job also, but I have been coaching since 2011 and working as an AFF instructor since 2022. I teach and coach a lot of AFF and FS students in the UK and abroad – both in the wind tunnel and in the sky whenever the weather allows. I am also a ballet teacher, and enjoy very much how the mental and physical methods and practices cross over between these two things. I enjoy it all very much and find teaching very rewarding. I love the work I get to do with my students.

Getting Away

I was heading out to Spain to Empuriabrava for one of the Christmas boogies. My boyfriend was already there and I was to arrive just in time for a balloon jump. Balloon jumps are not common, but I had done one previously in Perris and loved it. So although I was going to arrive without much time beforehand, I felt that it was all good. No issues at all. In hindsight, it is pretty easy to see all of the factors lining up – the holes in the Swiss cheese of risk.

The first red flag is being super delayed at the airport on the way out. I was due to arrive in Empuriabrava with enough time for some sleep before the pre-dawn meeting time for the balloon, but we did not even take off from the UK until after midnight. My boyfriend collected me from Barcelona after three, which meant that by the time we got to the dropzone we had less than an hour before the bus was due to leave.

Preparation Issues

With no sleep or time to use, I had no information about the jump. I am comfortable with landing away from the dropzone, but I had no idea how anything was meant to work and no time to communicate properly or do any research. Previously in Perris, we had taken off from the dropzone and then landed off, but this time we would meet the balloons at another location.

Nobody had warned me about how cold it was going to be. The information I had received about the daytime jumping conditions was that it was alright, but I didn’t consider that through the night the Winter in Spain can easily be below freezing. With this being a quick weekend trip, I only brought hand luggage and did not bring the lovely warm suit I wear at home through the cold months. When I ski I am always sure to wear the right amount of clothing, as I don’t function very well in the cold. This is something that has crossed over to my skydiving, but this time my thick suit wouldn’t fit in my luggage, so it got left behind.

Logistics

I don’t usually skip breakfast either. Guy had been out to buy food, but had also moved our accommodation into a hotel because the Airbnb he booked had been too cold. We didn’t eat and forgot to take it. There was no kettle in the room and we were rushing to get out – off to the dropzone with no calories and not enough clothes on. One more thing is I did not re-pack my pilot chute. When I travel with a rig I always keep it loose, then pack it up in the way I like upon arrival. With things being such a rush I overlooked even this, and against my normal practice, it stayed in the BOC the whole time. It seems like a small thing to consider, but our approach to gear in ways like this can affect our jumps I think.

Before the staff arrived nobody was sure where we were taking off from – but it was supposed to be quite close. I performed all my usual checks and switched my CYPRES on. So I am all ready to go, thinking that it is going to be a short drive, but by the time we are finally in the vehicles it turns out to be around thirty minutes away, and I am looking at the terrain going up and down and up and down. Despite all the waiting around our briefing was very short, but it did include that our units definitely need to be on. At any point, I could have turned my CYPRES off and on again, and probably should have, but ultimately didn’t having decided that the elevation was not really any different.

Balloons

Compared to ours, the other balloon seemed to be really high and over nice fields. We appeared to be flying in a different direction and over ground mixed with woods and open spaces. We were last out, and while the others all got around five thousand feet, we exited at maybe just over four. We were talking over the usual things, like how we would track off this way and that way to avoid the trees – then the pilot is telling us you have got to jump now. Go now, go now. I love to jump out of things and off things, but I am sitting there on the edge of the basket and I really don’t want to go at that moment.

Guy was a little underneath me when we started to track off, but moved away on his back and gave me space. I can remember wondering why I was waving off for no reason and hearing my audible alarms at the same time. On review of the video I reach to deploy at three thousand feet, and I cannot pull my pilot chute out. I struggle with it a bit, then one final massive pull attempt flips me over onto my back. Nothing is happening, my alarms are screaming and I am trying to get onto my belly to deploy my reserve. Then I could see my pilot chute out, but unbeknownst to me at the same time my CYPRES had fired.

I am aware that I am slowing down and my orientation is shifting to upright. I am over the trees and my altimeter says five hundred feet. Then I can feel my reserve inflate behind me, developing into a side-by-side. By some miracle, there is a track through the woods, barely the width of a car. I know that I can steer but only very carefully, and aim for the middle. All the time I wonder what it would be like to land directly in the trees, but I make it down the centre of the path through them, keeping everything small and ready with a PLF.

Lucky!

My reserve caught the trees on one side, which flipped me around onto my back. They are pine trees, and the ground is kind of soft – so this and my container I guess stopped me from being injured. I balled up tight to go through any branches, and the only bruise I had was on my chin. Then my phone is ringing and it is Guy running through the trees to find me.

There were a lot of times I could have just not gone for this jump. The desire to see it through no matter what can be strong, but recognising the signs that things are not going correctly and risks are stacking up is as much a part of building experience as relying on that experience to see you through in adverse situations. Even when you regularly teach new skydivers how to avoid similar situations, nobody is immune to peer pressure or stubbornness relating to how much something costs or how much effort you have already put in – when maybe you should not go.

I think that my CYPRES firing perhaps prevented any injury. Having two canopies out is never good, but it might have been the difference between steering into a mostly clear landing spot or going directly into the forest. There are lots of lessons here for me to understand properly, and hopefully, others can draw from it too. I want to say thank you to CYPRES because while it is hard to say for sure, I believe that without it I might have been injured instead of walking away unscathed.